I moved into the new place on Thursday, and since then I’ve been arranging my things little by little. Of course, the most important for me were the electronics. I sat down on the sofa and listened to music as soon as I had my hifi set out. I also watched the first DVD of Michael Palin’s series on the Himalaya, which is promising. I sorted my kitchenware pretty quickly, and my clothes, um, are coming along.

When I was looking for apartments there was a handy little tool I kept using, walkscore. It’s a website that measures how dependent you would be on having a car, if you lived at a given address. The address gets a score from 0 to 100, 100 meaning you can do everything on foot. There is also a little map showing you the nearest grocers, banks, restaurants, parks…

My new apartment scores a very respectable 92. I was curious to see what my old place in New York would score, and of course, it got 100.

While I was playing with walkscore, after having signed the contract, I became aware of a little pattern:

– 505 Belmont ave, Seattle – current address

– 505 W54th st, New York – previous address

– 500 Riverside drive, New York – my IHouse days

Hmm, this bodes well…

My new neighborhood is called Capitol Hill. It’s possible to walk from it to downtown Seattle, but it feels like a town (as does downtown compared to New York). The streets are quiet, and lined with trees, and there is very little traffic noise except in Broadway. Crucially for me, near my place are some of the bigger parks in the city. I also found out that one of the two running clubs in Seattle is a short walk away. That’s another pattern.

The apartment is fantastic. Yes, the floors are hardwood, which I was about to give up on. Possibly the most impressive feature is that it has a deck with a view: